How to Train Your Dragon **

Director: Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders

Once again disregarding time accurate conceptions in favor of contemporary behavior and any trace of verisimilitude within the time and characters, Dreamworks Animation Studios delivers what might be one of their most successful attempts at maturing.
In How to Train Your Dragon we meet Hiccup (voiced somewhat annoyingly by Jay Baruchel) a young viking who's the shame of his town.
While everyone else in town-including other kids his age-indulge in the tradition of dragon slaying, Hiccup pretty much messes up every time he leaves the house.
His father Stoick (voiced by Gerard Butler in an unimaginative 300 way) the village leader leaves for battle and expects his son to have achieved something when he returns.
Fortunately for Hiccup he meets Toothless, a young dragon (of a race nobody has seen before!) who befriends him and soon enough he's not only taming all the other dragons but becomes the village's favorite son.
For all the Oedipal and quasi-environmental issues at its center, there is really nothing in this movie you haven't seen before.
It indulges itself with cliché after cliché; from the characters' names to the things they do. Really what is it with Dreamworks insistence of disregarding everything in favor of contemporary personalities children will enjoy? Don't they have the slightest sense of historical conscience?
The film is somewhat entertaining though and visually it's beautiful to behold (Roger Deakins acted as visual consultant) but it puffs more often than it soars.